


cities at night

by mockturtletale



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Other, Panic Attacks, relationship angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1850053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryan falls in love with two people. Two guys, at that. Guys who are his teammates during his first year in the NHL.</p>
<p>He wishes he could say that was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to him, but having them love him back is so much worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cities at night

Ryan falls in love with two people. Two guys, at that. Guys who are his teammates during his first year in the NHL.

He wishes he could say that was the scariest thing that’s ever happened to him, but having them love him back is so much worse.

It takes a while.

Months of wishing and waiting and hoping. Careful denial. Reassurance that it’ll pass, it’s not what he thinks, it’ll go away, it was never there to begin with. He’s wrong and it’s not right and if they ever find out he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

Weeks where they keep reaching out and he has to turn away, again and again.

They won’t give up on him, they don’t let him get far.

He can’t believe it at first. Is honestly incapable of finding sense or truth in what they’re saying, when push comes to shove and wishes turn to words. They can’t. And _they_ can’t.

They do.

They are.

And Ryan is terrified.

It’s not so bad when they’re at home in Edmonton, when they can flank him in bed and hold him in sleep with their arms and their knees and the soft heat of their breath against his shoulder, in his hair.

But on the road he runs.

He lies awake and listens to Jonesy’s snores, and he thinks about how it’ll feel to lie like this - alone - when they’re gone again. When this ends. When they realize that they never needed him. When they don’t want him anymore.

The first time he finds himself lying in the dark in a big bright city fighting to catch his breath he flees into the heart of it. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for or what he thinks he’ll find to ease the pounding in his chest, but it’s not out there. Even with his breath visible in the air right in front of him, he can’t breathe, his lungs tight and heaving. The street lights make his head swim and the world is too big at night, too dark and too easy to get lost in.

The next time it happens he only makes it as far as the corridor outside his room before he freezes up. He knows what’s out there, and he knows it won’t help. He’s trapped. Running away with nowhere to go.

He sinks to the floor and drops his head between his knees and breathes.

In a hotel he can’t remember the name of, under harsh, humming lights with carpet scratching the palms of his hands and wallpaper against his back, with the men he loves sleeping four rooms away, Ryan breathes.

It’s the fact that it’s all so forgettable, he thinks. That's what finally succeeds in calming him down. Hotel corridors become his home on the road because they’re in every single city, waiting for him every night he needs them. Nothing he can get attached to, nothing he can remember in specifics or with any real clarity.

Somewhere around the fourteenth or fifteenth time, Taylor finds him.

Nearly trips over him, actually.

Ryan is sitting like he always does now - his knees drawn up and his head resting on them in his hands. Breathing slowly, precisely, in and out. Breathing in and letting go. He goes somewhere else, here. He doesn’t think, he doesn’t feel, he just breathes and holds on.

“What the! _Ryan_!?”

Ryan feels like he’s underwater, dragged back to the surface only by Taylor’s startled voice, harsh here, sharp like the light.

He looks up, but he can’t say anything, can’t speak here and now, outside of everything because he's suffocating in the middle of it.

Taylor drops the ice bucket he’d been carrying and gets to his knees in front of Ryan. He reaches out, hands gripping tight above Ryan’s elbows, and shakes him gently.

“Ryan. Ryan? Ryan say something. Are you okay?”

Ryan starts to laugh. He looks up into Taylor’s concerned face, and lets his knees fall apart and he reels Taylor in with a hand wrapped tight in his shirt. He hugs Taylor tight to his chest, and he laughs.

He can’t be sure he won’t cry  
.  
Here with Taylor, when he’s _with_ him or Jordan, he doesn’t think like this. He can’t worry about them leaving when they’re right there next to him.

Taylor lets Ryan grip him tight for a second, basically squeezing the life out of him, before he pulls back a little. He holds Ryan’s hands in his face and asks him again what’s wrong. He looks so worried, confused and not at all like he’s judging Ryan, like he might find it strange that he just found Ryan sitting in a hotel corridor freaking out in the middle of the night. Just worried. He’s looking at Ryan with such care, such clear, sure _love_ , that Ryan can’t imagine ever not trusting him completely, not needing him.

“Don’t leave,” Ryan says, finally.

“What? Ryan I’m not going anywhere, I’m right here,” Taylor says, still touching Ryan, tilting his face up with a thumb under Ryan’s chin so Ryan can’t look away.

“But after,” Ryan says, “when this ends, when you want to stop, when it’s you and Jordan again, don’t …. just tell me we’ll still be friends. It won’t get weird. I won’t lose you. I can’t -”

Taylor stops him with a kiss. He leans in and presses his mouth to Ryan’s, mid-sentence, and Ryan’s stomach drops because is this what they’ve been waiting for? For Ryan to say it first so they didn’t have to? Is this it?

Taylor pulls away and gets to his feet. He bends to pick up the ice bucket he’d abandoned and Ryan wonders if he’s going to walk away, just like that. That wouldn’t surprise Ryan. It makes sense to him. He can see why.

But when he looks up again, it’s not to see Taylor retreating back down the hall to his room with Jordan. He’s standing looking down at Ryan, holding out his hand.

“C’mon,” he says, “up.”

Ryan really should be getting back to bed. It’s almost early, and he needs to sleep, they have another game tonight. So he reaches for Taylor’s hand and lets him pull him up off the floor, but Taylor doesn’t let go once he’s standing. He keeps a hold of Ryan’s hand, laces their fingers together, and leads him right past the room he’s sharing with Jonesy.

Ryan tries to pull away because he can’t face Jordan right now. He can’t do this break up that won’t even really be a break up because it’s not like this was ever serious or forever. Not for them. It doesn’t have to be a thing, he thinks. Talking about it would just make it worse. But Taylor won’t let go, will entertain none of Ryan’s attempts to avoid this.

When they get inside Jordan is lying awake in the far bed. The one closest to the door is still made.

He turns to look at the door when it opens, and starts to say “What took so -”, but stops when he sees that Taylor is towing Ryan along behind him. Ryan doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to do this, but he won’t ever let go of Taylor’s hand.

Taylor drops the ice bucket on the floor inside the door and locks it behind him, and then he all but pushes Ryan over to Jordan, who still looks confused but scoots to make room, holding the covers back so Ryan can climb into bed next to him, in the middle when Taylor lies down next to him and throws an arm over him, pulling him back against him so they’re spooning, facing Jordan.

Weird, but Ryan isn’t going to complain or say no to one more night like this with them.

He snuggles back against Taylor and ignores the way his stomach aches. He closes his eyes and breathes them in and he tries to go to sleep, but Taylor has other ideas.

“Ryan hopes things aren’t going to be awkward when we break up with him,” he says, “he wants to make sure we can still be friends afterwards.”

Ryan doesn’t open his eyes. He doesn’t think any part of that is too much to ask.

Jordan doesn’t say anything at first, but after a minute he reaches out to touch Ryan, to brush his hair out of his face. When Ryan finally looks at him, he looks a lot like Ryan feels. Hurt. All Ryan can do is stare. Lie here in Taylor’s arms and look at Jordan next to them, his knees fitted between Ryan’s under the sheets, and wait. Wait for it to end, he supposes. Which is kind of what he’s been doing ever since it started.

“What’s it going to take?” Jordan asks, and Ryan doesn’t understand.  
“Do we have to like, get your jersey number tattooed on us? Because I think I could make that work.”

Taylor laughs behind Ryan.

“You really, really couldn’t. You’d look so dumb with tattoos.”

Ryan has lost the thread of this conversation.

“Fuck off,” Jordan says easily to Taylor, reaching past Ryan to flick him in the nose, and then focusing on Ryan again.

“Really, though. We could get like … promise rings?”

Taylor ‘hmm’s at that, but “Yeah, actually. I like that,” he decides.

Ryan is still confused. He still feels sick, but now it’s like the first time Jordan had kissed him, the first time Taylor had cornered him after practice and very seriously lectured him on how he needed to stop apologizing in the locker room every time one of their teammates thought it was hilarious to call him a homewrecker. He feels sick with hope.

He risks speaking.

“You mean like … the three of us?” he says, and his world falls apart. Taylor leans over him and buries his face in the crook of his neck and groans, and then asks him how he is this stupid. Jordan shakes his head and laughs gently at Ryan, this soft, serious look in his eyes that has Ryan’s heart trying to beat its way out of his chest to get to Jordan.

“We can’t technically promise you forever, but that’s what we’re looking for, here,” Jordan says, reaching over and tugging at the neckline of Ryan’s shirt, pressing the palm of his hand to Ryan’s chest under his left clavicle. Taylor’s hand comes up over Jordan’s, and Ryan holds his breath for a second. And then he lets it go, and breathes again, his chest filling under their touch. His world didn’t fall, it just re-focused.

“Oh,” Ryan says, smiling at Jordan and then twisting around to smile up at Taylor, “okay. Yeah.”

Taylor kisses him , and Jordan laughs again.

“You’re gonna be so sorry. Hallsy’s been talking about putting a ring on you since you scored your first hat trick.”

Taylor pulls away to pout at Jordan.

“Aww baby, you’ll catch us one day,” he says, and then winks at Ryan.

“I already have, you tool,” Jordan says.

**Author's Note:**

> Not true, not profiting.


End file.
